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Jennifer Cunningham

Lobbyist

Jennifer Cunningham has been called the most powerful unelected woman in New York politics.

As the former political director for the state's largest health care union, 1199 Service Employees International Union, as well as the successful manager of Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's 2006 campaign, Ms. Cunningham, 45, is a rising star.

One of her first victories, in the mid-1990s, was to persuade Gov. George Pataki to provide health insurance for the working poor, via a program called Family Health Plus. This past year, as a lobbyist, she convinced the Legislature to raise home health aides' hourly pay to $10 from $5.

Ms. Cunningham's pride in public service is plain, and one could get the idea that she's a softy from her friendly manner. But that would be wrong. When Gov. Eliot Spitzer tried to cut hospital and nursing home funds last spring, Ms. Cunningham wrote the ads that used nurses and old people to scold the new governor.

"It was contentious," she says. "It was an odd assumption that because there was this new 'tough guy,' we would have any other response than to do right by health care workers and patients."